The Prairie Gardener’s Go-To for Vegetables

By Janet Melrose and Sheryl Normandeau

All the most common questions about growing vegetables in the prairies are answered in this first installation of the new gardening series, Guides for the Prairie Gardener.

Too often people think of vegetable gardening in the prairies as challenging, but certified master gardeners Sheryl and Janet are here to show you how rewarding it can really be.

From planning to planting, they encourage you to take a hands-on approach with your prairie garden. They let you know when—and how!—to transplant your carefully nurtured seedlings in the spring, ways to shelter your plants from that inevitable July hailstorm, and how to determine how much irrigation is necessary in the arid prairie climate. They help you figure out if you should prune your tomatoes, how to hold up your pumpkins off the ground, and maximizing your harvest by planting in succession. And they show you how you can directly influence the quality of your produce, minimizing problems such as woody radishes, buttoning cauliflower, and split cabbage heads.

This Q&A-style resource covers all your most common questions about cultivation practices, preventing damage from frost, flood, and drought, harvest and storage, and they cover your questions about the veggies you love to grow:

• Garlic, Onions, and Leeks
• Lettuce
• Brassicas
• Carrots, Celery, and Beets
• Legumes, Corn and Other Warm Season Edibles
• Tomatoes and Peppers
• Potatoes
• Squash, Pumpkins, and Cucumbers

Whether you’ve just acquired your first garden space, or you’ve been growing vegetables for decades, gardeners are always learning and experimenting, building on the wisdom gained on their own or from others. With Sheryl and Janet on your team you’re that much closer to achieving success in your prairie garden!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Touchwood Editions
• Release date: Apr 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781771513135

Janet Melrose

Janet Melrose is a garden educator and consultant, and an advocate for Calgary’s Sustainable Local Food System. She is a life-long gardener and holds a Prairie Horticulture Certificate and Home Farm Horticultural Therapy Certificate. She has a passion for Horticultural Therapy and facilitates numerous programs designed to integrate people marginalized by various disabilities into the larger community. She is a regular contributor to The Gardener for Canadian Climates magazine. She lives in Calgary where she runs her education and consulting company, Calgary’s Cottage Gardener.

Book preview

The Prairie Gardener’s Go-To for Vegetables

Janet Melrose & Sheryl Normandeau

A decorative black and white painting of various squashs.

Dedicated to all prairie gardeners

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Cultivation Practices

How much water do vegetables need?

What are the benefits of crop rotation in the vegetable garden? How should I go about doing it?

What is succession planting? How does it work?

What types of mulch should I use in the vegetable garden? How much should I apply?

What is a floating row cover? How do I use it properly?

When should vegetable seedlings be thinned? How do I go about doing it?

What are the best bang for your buck vegetable selections, the ones that produce the most yield per plant?

Weather and Environmental Disorders

How do I prevent transplant shock?

Some of my vegetables are going to seed early in the season, before I have a chance to harvest them. Why are they doing this?

Some of my vegetable plants have scabby, ribbed striations or blisters on the leaves—what is this caused by and how can I prevent it?

My tomato (or strawberry) fruits are deformed—what could this be from?

What can I do to fix my vegetable garden after a hailstorm has shredded it? Is there anything I can do to prevent the damage in the first place?

Frost! It’s the bane of the garden in late spring and early autumn. What can I do to protect my plants when the forecast is dipping uncomfortably?

Does frost enhance or sweeten the flavour of some fruits and vegetables? Which ones? How much frost can they take?

What does herbicide damage commonly look like in tomatoes and other plants? What can I do to help my plants recover?

Mind your soil temperatures! Should we plant on May 24?

Garlic, Onions, and Leeks

When is the best time to plant garlic? What are some tips and tricks for best results?

When do I harvest scapes from hardneck garlic?

Should I plant garlic and potatoes purchased from the grocery store?

Onion sets versus onion seeds: What are the pros and cons of growing each?

The seed catalogue lists long-day, day-neutral, and short-day onions—what types are best for prairie gardeners to grow?

Is it worth it to grow leeks on the prairies? How can I grow some that are larger than the size of my index finger?

When is it time to harvest garlic, onions, and shallots?

Brassicas

Why did my broccoli or cauliflower plants fail to produce heads?

What causes cabbage heads to split? What about kohlrabi?

How do I keep my radishes from getting woody and tasteless?

What is the key to successfully growing decent-sized Brussels sprouts? Mine are way too small.

Carrots, Celery, Beets, and Lettuce

What causes sunburning in carrots? How can I prevent this?

I’m having really spotty carrot germination. What can I do to prevent this next year?

My carrots are puny or—even worse—forked or crooked! What can I do to prevent this?

Is there anything I can do so that my celery plants produce larger bunches?

My beets are tiny and I’ve been growing them all season. How can I fix this issue for next year?

Which vegetables are better to directly sow into the garden (not start as transplants)?

What causes heading lettuce to fail to produce heads?

My lettuce is brown at the edges of the leaves—why?

Peas, Beans, and Corn

Pea pod problems: They’re empty, dry, or completely absent. Why is this happening?

My bean plants didn’t produce well this year. What can I do to get more beans?

Which veggies can grow in part shade or filtered (dappled) shade?

What causes sweet corn to produce just a few ears? I was hoping for a better harvest.

I am looking at the seed catalogue and there are so many categories of sweet corn. What are the differences between them?

Tomatoes and Peppers

What causes tomato flowers to prematurely drop off?

What is the difference between indeterminate and determinate tomatoes?

Do you have to prune the side shoots from tomatoes? If so, when and how do you do it?

Should I top my tomato plants to get better yields?

My tomatoes are mushy and rotting at the blossom end. What causes this?

Does changing the pH of my soil make my tomatoes taste sweeter?

What causes bleached, dry areas on the developing fruit of peppers? What can I do to prevent this?

What does it mean when a chili pepper shows corks?

Will sweet (bell) peppers continue to ripen and change colour after picking?

Potatoes

Does a potato plant have to flower to produce potatoes?

My potato plants are producing weird things that look like little green tomatoes. What are they and should I do something about them?

What does it mean to chit potatoes? How and why do you do it?

Hilling potatoes—is it necessary? If so, how is it done?

What is the difference between determinate and indeterminate potatoes? How does selecting one type over another influence yield?

Squash, Pumpkins, and Cucumbers

Can I grow cucumbers, summer and winter squash, and pumpkins vertically?

My cucumbers and squash had a lot of flowers this growing season, but they didn’t produce very much fruit (or any at all!). Some of the fruit fell off the vines before they reached full size. What is going on here?

How can I keep pumpkins (or other large squash) from rotting on the ground while they grow and ripen?

Seriously bitter cucumbers: How can I prevent this?

I’m really late with planting my garden. Are there any vegetable seeds I can plant in July that will give me a good harvest?

Harvesting and Storage

What is the best way to harvest leafy greens, such as lettuce and spinach, so that the crop lasts longer?

I have to harvest my winter squash before it is ripe on the vine. How can I ripen it indoors? What about my green tomatoes?

How do I cure onions and garlic for storage?

Acknowledgements

Notes

Sources

About the Authors

About the Series

Landmarks

Cover

Introduction

Full disclosure: We are really into vegetable gardening! We can’t get enough of the thrill of nurturing a tiny seed into a juicy, flavourful tomato, scooped fresh from the plant; questing for potatoes, snugged into hills of warm soil; or grilling up sweet cobs of corn we’ve grown ourselves at a family barbecue.

We know you feel the same way, and you want your vegetable gardens to be healthy, sustainable, and bountiful. We want to help you work with—not fight—our admittedly interesting climate. We talk a little about botany, so that you can understand how and why specific plants grow the way they do. We also help you troubleshoot when cultural or environmental conditions cause hiccups or wreak havoc with your crops. We often hear the words challenging or daunting to describe prairie gardening, but our goal is to give you the information and tools you need to soften that term a little and bring it much closer to rewarding.

As you read this book, you’ll find that as we work through the individual answers to your questions, we are also dedicated to helping you become long-term vegetable gardeners, focused on creating healthy gardens that will sustain you, your family, and your community for years to come. We want to encourage you to think about the reasons why it’s so important to grow your own vegetables (and other edibles). Producing your own food and bringing it from seed to the table is a powerful way to become more self-reliant and to take back ownership of our sustenance. Food becomes the stuff of life, not just something wrapped in plastic or shoved into boxes on the shelves at the grocery store. We want to emphasize how every living creature works within ecosystems and how we, as gardeners, are responsible for supporting and promoting those life cycles—after all, we are part of them.

From planning to planting, we encourage you to take a fully hands-on approach with your gardens. This includes knowing when—and how!—to transplant your carefully nurtured seedlings in the spring, ways to shelter your plants from that inevitable July hailstorm, and determining how much irrigation is necessary in our arid climate. We’re going to help you figure out if you should prune your tomatoes, what types of supports you should use to hold up your pumpkins off the ground, and how to maximize your harvest by planting in succession. And we’re going to show you how you can directly influence the quality of your produce, minimizing problems such as woody radishes, buttoning